Voice Actors - Shin'ichirou Miki and Ryou Horikawa

[gemini_artemis]

Okay, so maybe I should be doing something more productive, like writing fic or, even better, finishing my homework, but yesterday I was hanging around the MLR section on FF.net again and got the promise of at least one Yamino fic, probably two. So, I was on a Yamino-fangirling mood and decided to read about his voice actor.

I found out that he's

Comments

[gemini_artemis]

Oddly enough, Japanese VAs usually sound the same to me, too, unless they're VERY popular and/or have a very unique voice and/or I've been constantly listening to them in another series. Even then it's tricky, because some of them can sound very different from one character to another. Like Shin'ichirou Miki.

But I thought your problem was with the Vampire Princess Miyu TV series, but you still liked the OAV? Though, I can't really see why you'd have a problem with Larva being able to speak and having a face. I mean, he's voiced by Shin'ichirou Miki and has such a pretty face! :D

Yes, keigo is the polite/respectful language. In Japanese, there's a huge difference between casual speech and polite speech, and even within the latter there are many levels of politeness. The more polite, the more elaborate and verbose. Keigo is almost like a whole different language; I heard that even native Japanese must take courses to learn it properly. Here are some examples:

"Can I send you a letter?"
[casual] Tegami wo okutte mo ii?
[keigo] Tegami wo okurasete itadaite mo yoroshii deshou ka?

"Please correct the exercise."
[casual] Renshuu wo naoshite (kudasai).
[keigo] Renshuu wo teisei shite itadakereba, makoto ni arigatai to zonjimasu. (Lit., "I know I'll be truly thankful if you do me the favour of correcting the exercise.")

"Sorry."
[casual] Gomen.
[keigo] Moushi wake gozaimasen.

I don't know about hentai, but it seems that Shin'ichirou Miki is "very active in BL dramas". Apparently, BL means Shounen-ai/Yaoi. I'd never heard of it until now.

[vampirenaomi]

Yes, my problem is with the TV series, not the OVA (which I still love). Larva was a much more interesting character when he couldn't speak and wore that mask. Now that he can speak, he an Miyu can angst endlessly to each other between spitting out semi-mysterious mumbo jumbo about destiny. Every main character in that series is a horrible, whiny and self-righteous angst bucket who doesn't accomplish anything useful.

Whoa, keigo is so bizarre! You're right at saying how it's almost like a different language. The politeness in that "Please correct the exercise" is just... wow. o_o

[gemini_artemis]

At least Larva is hot? :D Seriously, though, I can see why you'd dislike the series after having got so used to the OVA. Which one came first, by the way?

Yeah, that's why speaking in keigo is so daunting to us students, especially us Brazilians, who are always very informal even towards our own teachers. In keigo, you can never give direct orders or speak for another person or say anything that even suggests that you know something for fact or that you're right and someone else is wrong.

The literal translation of the keigo "Can I send you a latter?" is also long-winding: "I wonder if it would be all right if you did me the favour of allowing me to send you a letter?"

Besides, some words are different depending on whether your speech is casual or if you're referring to yourself or to someone superior. For example:

Watashi wa iku. = I'll go. (casual)
Watashi wa mairimasu. = I'll go. (keigo)
Sensei wa irasshaimasu. = The teacher will go.

[vampirenaomi]

The OVA came first. I think it was sometime in the 80's while the TV series was closer to 2000 or something. And yes, Larva is hot. :D

I can't even imagine what it must be like to have to speak such a different form of the language. It's bad enough to remember to be polite in English, but such massive differences would drive me insane. Are you required to use keigo in class?

Japanese is such a bizarre language. By the way, are you familiar with the Duraljan theory?

[gemini_artemis]

2000? I thought it was a lot older than that. In this case, I'd have expected better animation quality. I mean, even the OVA looks better, and it's quite old. One would think that the TV series was the one made in the 80s and the OVA was made in 2000.

It's bad enough to figure out how to say something in plain Japanese, but then having to sugar-coat it and memorise new words that can be used only speaking of oneself and others that must only be used when speaking of others... It takes me at least half an hour to write a short e-mail to my teacher, and we're totally hopeless when we are forced to speak keigo in class. Fortunately, the teacher is very patient with us and will let us speak in Portuguese or standard Japanese if we're having too much trouble.

No, I don't think I've ever heard of that theory. What is it about?

[vampirenaomi]

Just checked it, and the TV series came out in 1997. The quality is really terrible sometimes, but I wouldn't have a problem with that if Miyu wasn't such an annoying character in it.

Your teacher is Japanese, right? I find what you said about e-mails funny because whenever I write to my English teachers, I always try to be very formal as well. There's this one teacher who I think is insanely scary and strict, but he always writes back to me with no capitalization or correct grammar.

I'm not too familiar with the theory either because I can't find info about it. It was just briefly brought up in my German language history class. This Finnish doctor found a rare genetic disease in one part of Finland. The peculiar thing was that the only other place in the world where that disease can be found is Japan. He got interested in it and started doing research about the languages. Eventually he found so many similarities that he deduced that the major agglutinative languages in the world are related. How the heck Finnish, Hungarian, Japanese, some languages spoken in the Andes and some ancient Middle Eastern languages etc. are supposed to be related is completely beyond me, but there are some people who believe in these theories. It has never got much publicity because it goes so much against the current system that nobody believes it. It's interesting, if a bit ludicros.

[gemini_artemis]

My teacher is indeed Japanese, and she complains when someone sends an e-mail without revising it at least twice for typos. And if we make too many stupid mistakes, she'll bring our message to the entire class so that other students can try to correct it. I'm always horrified that the same could happen to me, so I avoid writing to her as much as possible.

Oh, I've seen a theory like that, which might or might not be the same you're talking about. Only it was about Japanese, Korean, and Turkish having the same origins. I know very little about ancient forms of Japanese, and exactly nothing about ancient forms of Finnish, but as far as I can see, there couldn't be more different languages than Japanese and Finnish. o_O And languages spoken in the Andes?! Isn't that going a bit too far?

Unless we're talking prehistoric here, but then, did they even have a language as we define it at that point in time?

I've also heard of this theory that Finnish and Japanese people are related, just like native Americans (in the entire continent) are related to Asians. Again, they strike me as the most different people ever, but that's me.

[gemini_artemis]

Just wanted to clarify something: I can see many similarities between Asians and Americans. It's the Japanese and Finnish who look too different to me.